


Insomnia

by gayalondiel



Category: Sherlock (BBC)
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-30
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:52:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayalondiel/pseuds/gayalondiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson has trouble sleeping.  Sherlock thinks he can help, but can he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Holmes characters fall in the public domain: This version falls under the creative control of Messers Moffatt and Gatiss, and the BBC. No ownership is implied or inferred. This is done for love only.
> 
> AN: This is scary. Scary because it's my first fic for a new fandom, and scary because I never write anything beyond PG or PG-13 if you squint, so this is a bit of a departure. I cannot express how helpful the support of my wonderful beta rabidsamfan has been - without your reaction to this, and your help, there is no way this would have got as far as this. Thank you as ever.

John Watson did not sleep well.

In Afghanistan, sleep had not been a problem, but something that claimed you when it could and got ignored otherwise.  He learned to sleep anywhere, at any time, for the quick cycle of watches left little time for rest and recuperation before he returned to his duties.  There was an art that the soldier learnt of resting whenever possible, be it five minutes sitting or standing somewhere relatively safe, or collapsing onto the nearest bunk in exhaustion after a long hard day of patrols, threats and attacks, watch keeping and emergency surgery on soldiers too wounded to wait for evacuation.  It was the norm to have turned in, off-duty, to be woken again to the cries of injured men within an hour, to get up and work purely on adrenaline, and then collapse, knowing that he only had a short while before he was on duty again.  It was the sporadic, dark sleep of an exhausted man, and in Afghanistan there was no time or space for dreaming.  


* * *

When he returned to London, John barely slept at all.  He paced his room at all hours of the night, made endless cups of tea and read his way through what seemed like more books than he had ever previously read, to keep his mind from straying to places he did not want it to go. The internet was his constant companion and he spent many hours tripping from site to site, scouring Wikipedia for useless information on anything and everything, making tangential leaps between articles until he had thirty tabs open and had forgotten why at least half of them had interested him.

On good days he read articles of interest and corrected the entries on medical conditions.  On days when he had a therapy appointment coming up he looked up what the collective internet consciousness thought someone recovering from PTSD should say and think and do, so that he was prepared for the oncoming battle with his therapist.  On bad nights he just clicked from link to link, looking for and failing to find something - anything - to distract him from thoughts that were at once relentlessly absorbing and far too much for him to handle.  Every night he succumbed, eventually, and then his dreams were a mass of images and sounds and pain, red and black and hot sharp white, and he woke with a shout, drenched in sweat.

He invariably told his therapist that he was sleeping just fine, thank you, and she always nodded and made a note on her pad to the effect that she didn’t believe him.

* * *

When he first spent the night at Baker Street John thought that sleep would come naturally, so exhausted was he from chasing Sherlock around London.  The mental and physical effort which the day’s events had taken were overwhelming and it seemed the most sensible thing to borrow some bedding from Mrs Hudson and sort out his belongings later.  John and Sherlock stayed up late into the night, giddy with the adrenalin of the day.  When John finally limped up the stairs, too tired to consider if his limp was psychosomatic or not, he fully expected to fall into the deep sleep that only exhaustion brings.

He dreamt of guns, of soldiers and blood and sand, of comrades dressed in pink, of roadside bombs, faceless people taking pills, and an old man laughing until John could bear it no longer and pulled the trigger of the gun in his hand, only to find Sherlock was stood before him, looking startled as the blood spread across his chest.

He woke with a shout and prayed that Sherlock had not heard.  He thought he heard a foot on the stair, but he lay still until the long silence convinced him that there was no-one there to hear the drumming of his heart.

* * *

After that sleep was much as it had been before, broken and uneasy, except that now he had more people to hide it from.  Mycroft had told him that he missed the war, and maybe that was true, but there were some things that no man could tolerate without anguish and pain, and these were the things he saw in his dreams, not the rush of excitement that came with the call to action. John took to lying awake in bed listening to his flatmate moving around the living room at impossible hours, working and experimenting and every now and again playing the violin until Mrs Hudson stormed upstairs to demand why he was making such an unholy racket at three in the bloody morning.  Too many evenings he left his laptop in the living room and was cut off, for it would seem too conspicuous to take it with him, and so he lay in bed staring at the ceiling and visualising Sherlock pacing backwards and forwards across the floor.  He strained to hear him muttering and if he closed his eyes he could see an image of Sherlock’s face, his eyes sparking and lips moving as he thought out loud, and when he opened his eyes he wondered why he should think of such a thing.

On nights that he did take his laptop to his room John worked on his blog, writing up case notes and checking the occasional comment that was left there by faceless internet users.  If there was a case in hand he would return to plumbing the depths of the internet, trying to learn a little about the many and varied subjects so that he would not be hopelessly useless to Sherlock.  

Whether he drifted off listening to the sounds of wakefulness from the living room, or slumped back onto the pillow with his laptop still glowing atop the covers, his dreams were still the same: soldiers and guns, brilliant colour and stark black and white: but they were now dominated by a dark-haired man in a long coat whom John pursued but could not reach.  In the mornings he wondered briefly at the meaning of his dreams, but they faded as dreams do and the distractions of the day prevented him from questioning why his focus, waking and sleeping, now seemed to be on Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

It had been many weeks since John had had anything approximating a decent night’s sleep, when one night the sound on the stair became a definite footstep that was followed by more, and then a soft knock sounded on the door.  John looked up in time to see Sherlock slipping in and pushing the door closed behind him.

“You’re not asleep,” he observed.

“No,” said John, at a loss as to what else to say.  He sat up straighter and Sherlock moved to the foot of the bed and sat so that he was facing John.

“You never sleep well,” he stated.

“No,” repeated John.  It crossed his mind to ask how Sherlock knew, but he was already far beyond asking for explanations. Sherlock invariably knew, whatever the question.

“I wondered if I could help,” Sherlock continued, with a tiny quirk of his eyebrows.  A movement distracted John, and he observed that Sherlock was tapping a single finger against the bed frame, as if he were nervous.

“Oh?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

Sherlock hesitated for a second, then very slowly and deliberately he leaned forwards and pressed a kiss firmly on John’s lips.  Somewhere in John’s mind the strangeness of this registered, but before he could react Sherlock had drawn back and was sitting watching him. John thought for a moment, of the changes he had already made in his life for this man, the way he had started moulding himself to fit Sherlock’s needs.  He thought of how he lay awake listening to him, how he dreamt about him, without ever knowing why.  And just as Sherlock seemed about to move and his eyes flickered away, it was John who leaned in and pressed his lips to Sherlock’s in reply.

The kiss was gentle at first, almost hesitant in its tenderness.  Moments later, when he seemed more certain that John was not about to pull away, Sherlock slipped a hand to the centre of his back and pressed, bringing them closer and deepening the kiss.  Somehow John’s arms found their way around Sherlock and clung to him with a need that he had not known he was harbouring, and then Sherlock had him in a tight grip and was guiding him down to the bed, their legs a fumbling tangle around the duvet, Sherlock’s full weight pressing down on John with comfort and want and need.

John sighed a little into the kiss and Sherlock took advantage of the moment, slipping his tongue between John’s lips and pulling them into a more passionate embrace.  They explored one another slowly as they kissed, still hesitant at first as though some sudden movement must shatter the spell they were under.  John reached up and wound his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, and Sherlock ran his hands over John’s face, neck, shoulders, toying with the buttons of his pyjama shirt; and then they returned to clinging to one another.

Their kisses became greedy, and to his surprise, had he any emotional space left with which to be surprised, it was John who made the next move.  He reached up to the neck of Sherlock’s dressing gown, slipping it down over slender shoulders and tugging at the shirt underneath until the effort finally forced them to break their kiss.  Sherlock pulled free of the garments and set hurriedly about freeing John from his shirt.

John could not help but gasp as cold air touched his skin, followed immediately by warm flesh. Sherlock leaned over him again, at once both gentle and demanding, and somewhere in John’s mind it registered for the last time that this should feel far more wrong than it did. Sherlock was moving now, pressing kisses to his neck, shoulders, chest, working his way down to the waistband of his trousers.  Deftly he made short work of peeling the material down over John’s legs, palming his hardness in passing and making John writhe in pleasure at the touch.

John was vaguely aware that Sherlock was in complete control of the encounter, but that did not seem so wrong to him as he watched Sherlock divest himself of trousers and underwear.  Sherlock paused then to run his gaze up and down John’s body with a greedy look in his eye, and John took the opportunity, although he had never thought he wanted to, to admire the lithe form leaning over him, pale skin flushed in patches and shining slightly in the half light. Sherlock turned his head, caught John looking and threw him a wicked, almost feral grin.  Then he was on him again, covering John’s naked body with his own.  His hands grasped at John’s shoulders, hips, buttocks as he pressed down on him, and it was all John could do to cling tightly to Sherlock as he drove his hips up in response.  They kissed and bit at one another’s lips, wild and passionate, and their bodies moved together as if they could by rhythm and desire and clinging and sweat and heat become a single being.  Sherlock slipped a hand between their bodies and caught their erections together in his grasp. He did not bother to tease but matched their rhythm at once, squeezing and pulling in the sweetest of movements until John came in fits of ecstasy coupled with a lingering sense of surprise.  Sherlock released him but continued to massage his own length until at last he climaxed with a shudder and a gasp, biting down on John’s shoulder.  For a long time neither man moved.

Eventually Sherlock slipped his weight from John’s body and rolled over, sprawling out on the bed beside him, all limbs and sweaty curls of dark hair.  Somehow between them they managed to tug the duvet out from beneath them and they lay side by side, tangled amid the bedding.

It was not until John awoke to see Sherlock slipping out of the door, dressed but turning his head to give John a wink, that he realised it was morning, and he had slept and passed the most restful night he had known in months.

* * *

The next day both men were the model of politeness, as far as their personalities could accommodate it - John was kind and even courteous, and Sherlock was less like himself than usual, making an effort in between bouts of energy and frustration with his cases to take an interest in things John was interested in, and even going so far as to make the tea more than once. Nothing was said about their night-time rendezvous, and John did not know what to expect or even what to hope for. So he went to bed as usual, and if he did make extra effort in brushing his teeth and choosing clean pyjamas, there was no-one else there to know it. For a long time he lay alert to every sound, listening to Sherlock moving around the living room. He pretended to himself, for there was on-one else to convince, that he was not listening for footsteps on the stairs - and when the steps did not come, he pretended even harder that he was not disappointed.

Eventually he slept, and his dreams were all of white and black, yellow flashes and pools of red, of soldiers and bodies and a tall slender man, and when he woke in the early hours of the morning with a start, cold sweat drenching his sheets, there was no-one there to comfort him. Breathing hard, he thought he heard a foot on the stairs to his room: but then it turned and resumed pacing in the living room, and John was again alone in the dark.  



	2. Resolution

A week passed. For Sherlock it was a quiet week and he filled his time with trips to Bart’s, experiments and generally making himself busy to keep his mind occupied between cases. For John it was a long week of broken sleep by night and confusing emotions by day. Between the two of them there was a sort of stiff politeness that was, if anything, growing more tense with the passage of time. Sherlock had swiftly got over the urge to make the tea and keep the flat in some semblance of order that had marked the immediate aftermath of their night together, but John was altogether too confused to feel like he was keeping up his end of returning to the status quo. Instead of maintaining a pretense of normalcy he began to retreat from Sherlock, spending more and more time out on walks or shut away in his room - which did not help, for he would often lie on the bed trying and failing not to think of that night. The confusion of what had happened on top of too little sleep were getting to him and he did not wholly trust himself to remain civil with Sherlock. He doubted that his flatmate noticed the change though: the tension seemed to glance off him without making an impression.

It was the night John decided not to go along on a case that Sherlock finally seemed to notice that something was wrong, or else he resigned himself to the conclusion that it was not going to go away on its own anytime soon. The call had come in from Lestrade in the evening and Sherlock had jumped at the chance of a case, clearly bored out of his wits without something to wrap his brain around, but when he glanced expectantly across the room John shook his head and expressed a desire for an early night, as though sleep were something that came easily to him. A flicker of something that could have been disappointment or annoyance passed across Sherlock’s face, but he did not speak, just turned and walked away.

In truth, John was grateful for his absence. Try as he might, he had been unable to stop listening for Sherlock from his room, certain that he could still hear him lingering at the foot of the stairs, then telling himself that he was just imagining it and getting frustrated with himself for not being able to let it go. He thought that he might be better able to work himself towards sleep if there was no-one to hear. He selected a book, made himself a cup of hot chocolate - a rare treat, since having both chocolate powder and milk that had not gone off in the flat at the same time was something of a miracle, and took himself up to his room at what could only be considered a reasonable hour. He drank the chocolate, noting with satisfaction that a hot milky drink was one of the first things a doctor should suggest for someone unable to sleep, and then lay back with his book.

After the seventh attempt to read the first page of the book, he threw it aside in disgust and listened instead to the emptiness of the flat. It was strange without the sound of pacing, muttering, the clinks and rattles of items being moved and the occasional twangs of violin strings. He rolled over onto his left, then his right, trying to muffle the sound of the too-empty flat by pressing his pillow over his ears, but he could not seem to switch off. With a sigh he returned the book, mug and himself back into the living room, feeling that if he was actually going to wait up until Sherlock got home, he could at least do it in front of the television where there would be some little distraction. Idly he flipped channels through the betting, bingo and late night advertisement channels, past the BBC2 Open University programming, and finally settled on the BBC News channel, which if nothing else might lull him to sleep by repetition alone.

Several hours later, when John had the hourly bulletin and half of the reports memorised, the door slammed open and Sherlock came in with the force of a small hurricane. He whipped off his scarf, muttering to himself about time wasters and idiots and Lestrade and Anderson and morons. He paced the room a couple of times without taking off his coat and then whirled suddenly and pinned John with a stare. John raised his eyebrows.

“You’re not asleep,” Sherlock said crossly. John could not help but remember the last time he had heard that and swallowed slightly.

“No,” he said, waiting to see what would happen next. Sherlock glared.

“Why didn’t you come, then? If I have to waste my time on these pathetic little cases the least you could do would be to...”

“Waste mine too?” asked John, feeling put upon and suddenly irritable. “Sherlock, I’m not your sidekick! You can’t just click your fingers and expect me to...” he ran out of words suddenly, not quite sure what he meant. The more he thought about the evidence, the more it suggested that he was Sherlock’s sidekick, but that didn’t mean that Sherlock could treat him like a commodity.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, clearly coming to the same conclusion about John’s status as sidekick. “So you’re making a point?” he asked. “You’re willing to risk a case, risk potential lives, over making a point?”

“Risking a case?” John glared at him. “Sherlock, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t need my help with your cases, however much you seem to like having an audience. You don’t need me, you just want me there for the plaudits, or to make yourself feel better, or to...” he trailed off, not certain where his thoughts were leading him.

Sherlock stared at him. “You’re not talking about tonight,” he said firmly. John raised his eyebrows and sighed.

“I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about at the moment, Sherlock. Goodnight.”

He moved towards the staircase, but Sherlock moved to the door, blocking his exit. There was a flicker of something dark in his eyes. John glared up at him, and Sherlock looked at him for a moment and smiled slightly.

“You think I used you?” he asked softly, with a slight warning in his voice.

“I.. you... dammit, Sherlock, I am not an experiment that you can pick up and put down whenever it’s convenient!” snapped John, recognising that the tension in the room had shifted from uncomfortable to something sweeter and more sinister. Sherlock stepped forward, and John automatically stepped back into the room.

“I thought I was helping you,” Sherlock said, his voice still soft. “I believed it had worked.”

“It did work...”

“Then why so angry?”

“Because it didn’t keep working!” said John, trying hard to keep his voice level. “You can’t just treat people that way and then act like nothing happened!”

“Ah,” murmured Sherlock. He stepped forward again, and this time, before John could step back Sherlock’s hands had gripped his arms and he was pulled into a kiss. He should have been surprised, or angry, but for a long moment he simply let Sherlock kiss him deeply. The hands on his arms tightened slightly and John realised they were moving, Sherlock was steering him back into the room, guiding them with precision yet never breaking the kiss. As they drew to a halt the back of John’s calf caught on something and he realised that he had been manoeuvred back to his chair. Around the edges of his vision he noticed a light, and after giving it a moment’s thought realised that it was the television, still chattering away to itself.

Sherlock’s grip on his arms shifted again and began to press him down towards the chair. Something in the back of John’s mind objected loudly enough to make itself heard through the swirling sensation of being kissed, powerfully and deeply and hungrily, and John tried to pull back, turning his head away slightly, but in the process he leaned too far into the position his flatmate was trying to put him into and with a sudden thud he found himself seated in the chair, Sherlock standing over him with a grin that was flushed and excited and just a little bit predatory.

“Sherlock...” John began but before he could speak Sherlock had moved and was lowering himself into the chair, facing John, wedging his legs either side of John’s and bringing placing his hands on his face, running his fingertips over temples and cheekbones and jaw. With an effort John reached up and caught Sherlock’s hands in his own, bringing them together in front of his chest. “Sherlock...” he tried again but the other man swooped and claimed his mouth again, kissing and nibbling at his lower lip as his hands slipped from John’s grasp to move over his chest. The temptation to give in to the passion of the moment was almost overwhelming but John turned his head. Undeterred, Sherlock turned his attention to John’s neck, his breath fast against heated skin as he bit and grazed his teeth along John’s hairline and behind his ear.

“Sherlock!” This time it was almost a shout, not of desire but of annoyance, as the resentment that had built in John’s chest as they argued made itself known with a powerful resurgence. “Sherlock, I’m trying to... will you listen!” John’s voice raised high on the last word and with a strength he didn’t know he had he placed his hands on Sherlock’s chest and pushed, and the other man tumbled to the floor in an undignified heap.

Sherlock looked up, anger sparking in his eyes as he glared at John. Defiant, John held his gaze and a long silence stretched between them, coloured only by both of their heaving breaths. Sherlock looked almost fierce, his body all limbs at slightly uncomfortable angles, sitting on the floor surrounded by the rumpled cloth of his coat.

“What was that?” he asked eventually, his voice soft and dangerous.

John licked his lips, a sudden thrill running through him as he looked down on his flatmate. “You weren’t listening,” he snapped, trying not to betray his feelings even though he was fairly certain that Sherlock could still read him like a book. “I’m not just going to let you do... whatever it is you want to do... and then just leave me hanging again. I don’t know what the hell this means to you, if it means anything, but I’m not...” Again he faltered. Sherlock showed no sign of moving from the floor, but shifted his weight and then slipped his arms out of his coat and jacket, leaving them to pool on the carpet behind him.

“What did it mean to you?” he asked lazily. “More than a friend helping out another friend?” He reached out lazily and brushed John’s ankle lightly with his fingertips, tugging experimentally at the hem of his trousers. John swallowed, trying not to react to the touch even though it was sending shivers up his spine.

“It’s not about what it meant to me,” he said. “The point is...”

“You’re avoiding the question,” murmured Sherlock, now fixated on John’s calf, rubbing his hand up and down the back of John’s leg, scratching lightly with his fingernails. “It must have meant something, or you wouldn’t be this upset.”

“I’m upset because you’re trying to distract me from being upset in a way that is totally unacceptable!” John burst out, and Sherlock paused in his advances up John’s leg. He sat back, and John felt the absence of his hand more keenly than he had felt its touch. He could see his friend’s brain working, pieces whizzing together and soon he would make some cutting remark, and John would snap back, and whatever hope they had of fixing this mess of anger and heat would be gone. Sherlock looked up at him, his eyes dark and angry, and suddenly the last vestige of self control in John snapped and he leapt forward, grabbing Sherlock by the shoulders, pushing him back and down onto the floor, pressing a bruising kiss onto his lips.

Sherlock gave back as good as he got, reaching up to John’s waist and gripping fistfuls of sweater and shirt, pulling John until his full weight bore down on him. Anger and frustration and sheer wanton lust vied for control in John’s head and the mix of them was intoxicating, overwhelming, preventing John from thinking straight and instead leaving him clinging to the last semblance of self-control as he pulled Sherlock closer if that was even possible and dug his fingernails into flesh in a way that he knew had to hurt through the thin material of his shirt. Sherlock shifted beneath him in frustration and John moved, slipping lips and tongue across the stubbled jaw and down across his throat, baring his teeth and nipping in a way that elicited a growl of sorts from the other man. Loosening his grip, he shifted his weight back and turned his hands to work pulling at the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt, not caring if they took some damage, kissing his way down his chest as he freed it of the material that was already slightly damp with sweat. Sherlock gave a soft moan as John pulled him up off the floor just enough to slip his shirt from his arms and cast it aside. Dropping back onto the carpet, he gave a hearty tug on John’s sweater and pulled it and the shirt beneath off John in one swift movement. Sherlock pulled him back down so that they were skin to skin and drew him in for another kiss, but an alarm was ringing somewhere in John’s head. This was just like last time, the heat and the passion and the momentum of it all. Sherlock was tracing his spine with his fingernails, sending shivers running across his back and down his arms. This was wrong, it was all wrong, and it was going to end up like before. Sherlock wrapped his arms around his back and pulled him in tight, shifting his hips and rubbing against him. All the sensation in John’s body seemed to pool in the pit of his stomach, but from what seemed like a long distance away his mind was yelling for him to stop. “Sherlock...” he murmured again, his lips still pressed against those of the man in question. He felt Sherlock smile against him, and his fingers were exploring again, slipping in towards the fastenings of his jeans. John pulled back, shaking his head slightly. “Sherlock, stop...” Still Sherlock pressed on, slipping beneath a button and freeing it from its confines... and the world suddenly seemed to snap into focus around John.

“Sherlock, stop!” he yelled, pushing him down on the floor, hard, and using the momentum of the movement to swing himself over and away, sitting instead on the floor beside his friend. All over his body he felt the loss of sensation and his nerves seemed to scream in protest. When he looked over his shoulder, Sherlock was lying on the floor, flushed, panting and confused. Pressing his lips together he pushed himself up from the crumpled mess of clothing and sat up, his face inches from John’s.

“Will you make up your mind?” he demanded angrily. John shook his head.

“I have,” he said. “I’m not going to let this happen again, Sherlock. Not like this.” For something to do, anything to show Sherlock that he was still capable of acting normally, he reached out and switched off the television at the set and blinked at the dimness of the room.

“Like what?” asked Sherlock. John raised his eyebrows, surprised in spite of himself to find him so at a loss.

“You’re the great detective,” he said in a tone that was nastier than he had intended. “You figure it out.”

Sherlock pulled his legs in so he was sitting cross-legged on the floor and shifted until he was facing John. “Alright,” he said, and there was a subtle hint of danger in his voice. “It’s like I said before, you think I used you. You think I’m using you again. Only I didn’t, you idiot, I was there for you when you needed me, so why should this be any different?”

“But you weren’t there! You can’t fix something once and expect for it to go away for good!” cried John. Anger and distress tore through him in equal parts and he felt his breath start to hitch. God help him, he was going to cry, not on his own in the silence of his room, but here with Sherlock who would think him pathetic and laughable, and would turn away from him forever. He closed his eyes, willing the hotness just behind his eyelids to dissipate. “You weren’t there,” he repeated, in a lower tone, trying to keep his voice steady. “You were there once, and then you left and you left me on my own, and...” He squeezed his eyes tightly, but not enough to stop a single tear from slipping between his lashes and pooling against his nose. He wanted to wipe it away, but he was frightened to move, to do anything to shatter the sudden silence that hung over them, broken only his slightly ragged breaths, and Sherlock's calmer ones. He waited.

Something cool and tentative touched his arm, and he realised that it was Sherlock’s hand, reaching around his back and pulling him gently closer. This was not the hot hungry pressure of before, but soft and gentle, guiding him until he could feel that they were side by side, and Sherlock’s arm had slipped into a comforting presence around his back. John did not dare to open his eyes and look at the expression on Sherlock’s face but kept himself rigid. He was trembling slightly with the tension, and he knew Sherlock could feel it.

“Go on,” said Sherlock, and his voice was different now, soft and cautious.

John licked his lips, opening his eyes at last but looking away, anywhere but at Sherlock. “You didn’t come back,” he said in bitter tones. “I waited and waited for you to come back, but you didn’t, you left me on my own and you didn’t come. You fixed it once and then you took it away and you left me on my own, and I had to go back to... how it was before. Did you think I didn’t hear that you were thinking about it? I heard you waiting at the stairs, and you decided that whatever you were doing was more important than me, and you left me on my own...” He stopped again, staring at the corner of the room, still willing the tears back and waiting for Sherlock to laugh derisively and tell him what a fool he was.

The laugh never came. The arm that was around his back tightened slightly, pulling him closer and guiding him into relaxing slightly against Sherlock’s side. He allowed himself to slump into the pressure but kept his eyes focused determinedly away from his flatmate.

“Oh,” breathed Sherlock, as though the final piece of a puzzle had clicked into place in his mind. John waited, but for a long time Sherlock did not say anything at all. John listened to his breathing instead, steady and regular and anything but boring, and slowly the tension in his shoulders and the heat behind his eyes diminished and he trusted himself not to burst into tears. Finally he turned his head slightly until he could see Sherlock in the corner of his eye. His eyebrows were raised slightly and he was pressing his lips together, looking almost nervous himself, which was a sight John had never expected to see.

“Oh?” he responded at length.

Sherlock looked down at him. “I didn’t know, John,” he said. “I’m not... I didn’t know how you were feeling. I had no frame of reference.”

“You didn’t...” John frowned and bit his lip. “You didn’t know? Sherlock, you know everything, or everything that could possibly be useful to you. How could you not know that?”

“I don’t know everything,” said Sherlock with slightly exaggerated emphasis. “I didn’t know Harry was short for Harriet.”

John chuckled despite himself, and a little more of the tension drained from his body. Sherlock took advantage of the moment to shift his grip, and John let himself be steered until he was sitting leaning against Sherlock in the pile of clothing, his back against Sherlock’s chest, skin pressed against skin. Sherlock wound his arms around John’s waist and clasped his hands in front of his torso. John was still uncertain what was going on, but he enjoyed the feel of Sherlock’s breath rising and falling against his spine, and reasoned to himself that if they were going to have an uncomfortable conversation, then a comfortable position was as good as any to do it from.

“When you say you had no frame of reference,” he said, “you mean...”

Sherlock sighed slightly, a puff of warm air caressing the back of John’s neck for a second. “Yes, that’s what I mean,” he said quietly. “You know how I feel about relationships, did you really think I’d have any experience to use for comparison? I’ve never really done this before, John, not with anyone.”

It was John’s turn to be silent. While he had known what Sherlock had said about being married to his work, he had not expected that he had never been in a relationship. He was pretty certain from the confidence he exhibited that Sherlock had had sex before, but that could be in any number of scenarios... He stopped his thoughts. Getting sidetracked would not help, and that was Sherlock’s business, not his.

“So,” he said. “You decided to come and help me out, because...”

“Because I wanted to help, and I thought I could.”

“And then?”

John felt rather than saw Sherlock shaking his head slightly. “Then, I didn’t know what was expected. I knew I had helped, but you started acting like nothing had happened, and I thought that you were alright, or you didn’t want my... help. I honestly wasn’t certain what to do, so I did what you were doing and acted normally.”

“But you must have known that it wasn’t fine,” said John. “At least, you know I wasn’t sleeping. You heard before, you must have heard again.”

“Of course I did,” said Sherlock. “And it seems you heard me listening, from what you’ve said. But by that time you’d started being elsewhere as often as possible. I thought you wanted me to stay away.”

“Oh,” said John again. They were both silent, contemplating the conversation that had answered some questions but left others hanging in the air. Sherlock tightened his arms around John’s waist, and John let his head drop gently back until it was resting in the curve of Sherlock’s neck. “So, what now?” he asked finally.

“That depends,” said Sherlock, tilting his head to look down at John. “Do you want my help?”

John took a deep breath, emotion welling in his chest yet again, not anguish this time but hope, and a certain amount of nervousness. He knew what lay behind the question, that Sherlock was not offering mere assistance but something more, something long lasting and special and wonderful. He had experienced enough resentment in the last week to know that this was what he wanted, but he had not really grappled with the thought that Sherlock might be willing to enter into some sort of relationship, however bizarre and confusing it might end up being. He had assumed that Sherlock had just wanted something physical and it had been pure good chance that it had helped him fight a few demons, at least temporarily. For him to want to be a part of John’s life so fully was almost overwhelming.

“John?” prompted Sherlock, and glancing at him John caught a tiny glimpse of fear in his eyes. Sherlock was afraid, afraid that John would reject him, but probably also afraid that John would accept and he would have to find a new way of living his life, accommodating John’s needs and problems into his considerations. Somehow that was what made John certain. For Sherlock to be afraid, he really had to mean it.

“Yes,” he said simply. “If you’re willing to give it.”

Sherlock’s face broke into a grin. “Anytime,” he murmured, leaning down to brush John’s lips with his own, not demanding or passionate but soft and gentle and sweet. John turned into the kiss and Sherlock’s arms shifted around him, almost cradling him in his lap. Normally John would have felt foolish, but somehow it felt right, and he hooked his legs over Sherlock’s crooked knee and just enjoyed himself. They held one another tightly, no high emotion or anger this time but a quiet need for one another that seemed to be reciprocated between them, and John’s fear that he needed Sherlock more than Sherlock needed him evaporated.

Sherlock pulled away, and for a second John was confused and almost disappointed, but then he rose elegantly to his feet and held out a hand for John to follow. When John stood up he was immediately captured of another kiss and then steered gently in the direction of the stairwell, and a slight sense of relief filled him as he realise that Sherlock was simply concerned about their comfort, and possibly about getting tangled up in the chaos of clutter in the living room. Sherlock flicked off the light switch as he passed and they made their way up the stairs in semi-darkness, stopping every few steps to kiss or touch one another. Eventually they made their way to the bed and Sherlock sat, pulling John with him, stretching out like a cat in the sun and guiding John until he was atop him, wrapped tightly in Sherlock’s arms. John recognised the gesture for what it was: Sherlock was granting him control, concerned that he should not feel used. And he did not - all the concern and anguish had disappeared like the morning mist under a bright sunrise, and all that was left was John and Sherlock, exploring one another, examining every inch, mapping one another’s features and textures as if they were trying to learn to identify one another by touch alone.

Their lovemaking was slow and gentle this time, Sherlock looking to John to take the lead, and John recognised just how difficult it had to be for his brilliant, obsessive friend to put himself so completely under someone else’s control. They shed their remaining clothes swiftly but John took his time, teasing Sherlock with kisses and nibbles and touches agonisingly close but not close enough, determined to make up for the confusion between them by giving him as much pleasure as he could. Finally when Sherlock was writhing and moaning and pleading and calling his name in a way that he liked very much, John took pity and leant down to take Sherlock in his mouth, pleasuring him as best he could, thinking of how he liked things and trying his best to translate them into action for Sherlock. It seemed to work - the other man bucked beneath him, hands gripping John’s head and shoulders as he gasped and pleaded and finally came with a shout that made John fervently hope that Mrs Hudson was fast asleep.

Sherlock tugged on John’s shoulders, pulling him up to the same level and kissing him deeply. He moved as if to return the favour but John held him fast. He wanted to be able to see, to look into Sherlock’s eyes and know that he was safe, they were safe and they would not lose one another in a mess of misunderstandings and hesitance again. Sherlock seemed to understand and he shifted sideways, guiding John down to the mattress that was soft and warm from Sherlock’s body heat, and John found himself grateful that Sherlock had been thoughtful enough to relocate them from the scratchy carpet. In the half light he watched him lying on his side, contemplating for a second, and then began making slow progress with his hand towards John’s hips. Sherlock took his time, stroking and tweaking and occasionally kissing every inch of John’s skin and he supposed he had that coming, but finally Sherlock’s hand closed around his cock and began to move with a rhythm that seemed to match John’s very heartbeat. He knew he would not last long and reached for Sherlock’s face, bringing it around so that he could look into those bright eyes that seemed to shine through the darkness, and all too soon he was lost with a whispered prayer and a firm kiss pressed to his lips.

Together they fell back on the sheets, panting slightly, Sherlock stretching again before idly tugging at the duvet until it covered them up to the hips. John shifted onto his side and Sherlock took the hint and wrapped his arm across his waist, pulling him close and spooning behind him. John felt utterly safe.

“Sherlock?” he murmured?

“Mm?” Sherlock pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

John swallowed, not having been this vulnerable with anyone in a long time. It was not easy, but he found that the sensation was not unpleasant and he found that he trusted Sherlock deeply, despite all expectations. “Don’t leave?” he asked.

“I won’t,” Sherlock said and his hand found John’s and squeezed it tightly. John squeezed back.

“Promise?” he said, and he felt Sherlock smiling against the tender skin of his neck.

“I promise,” he whispered.


End file.
